I recently covered a Maryland lawmaker who introduced a bill to investigate the four-day workweek. Well.. he’s withdrawn the bill. But not because he doesn’t believe in it.
It’s because of the tax credits.
The decision, the Montgomery County Democrat said, comes after consultation with his colleagues about the bill’s approach to luring businesses to participate by offering tax credits. Instead, he may seek funding to study the issue in the budget lawmakers are writing now.
“There is a legitimate question about tax credits,” Stewart said of the incentives.
He plans to introduce something next year and is considering working with the Department of Labor to create their own study.
While I’m looking at benefits — child and family care remain top priorities for people considering job opportunities, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has found. That said, I did want to highlight how interviews with the team at 4 Day Week Global cite specifically that smaller companies are taking up the 4-day work week as a reason to attract talent.
And a final thought – this is from the Next Web. Studies show that remote employees work more hours overall than those based in an office for part or all of the week—remote workersput in an extra 8.7 hours per week on average compared to their office-based colleagues, who average 6.5 extra hours. But the real flexibility – the non-linear work day- essentially allowing remote workers to work on their own schedule instead of following the traditional 9-5 model.
Why do we care?
For all the difficulties of the labor market, smaller companies continue to have an opportunity here to be agile and flexible. I’ll note that the lawmaker didn’t back off because it’s a bad idea – he backed off because of how the study was being funded.
Can you switch to a task-based management system? Managed services are supposed to be about outcomes, not about time. That means it should be about tasks, not time. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s all right there.